We’ve gone for a reasonably quick and dirty video blog this week, mainly because things have been very busy for us.

Inventory System

One of the biggest improvement areas has been the inventory system, now almost ready for a public display. This new inventory system supports crafting, interchangeable clothing, degradation, tracking, weapon customization, and much more. It’s really a revolutionary system for us and we’re extremely proud of the results that Jirka (our programmer assigned to this) has achieved.

Crafting

Not touched on in the video, but what we will be showing soon is the basics of how users can interact with items in the world - this is the next step in development of our inventory system beyond where it is now. This is not a traditional crafting system, but one that encourages layers to explore the ways in which items can be crafted.

Zombie pathfinding

In the video, towards the end, some before and after footage of work on the zombie AI pathfinding. Not only has this changed the role, threat, and speed of the zombies - but it has also yielded performance improvements. The increased accuracy of the zombies movement allows their movement to be slowed down to more sensible values, in line with those of the players themselves. We still have some other avenues to explore in this regard, but we’re very pleased with the results so far.

Mass zombie spawning server side

Now all zombies are spawned directly on the server and their movement is governed directly on the server itself. This has allowed us to provide increased security and hack prevention mechanisms by disabling functionality at the client level. It also means that zombies no longer “pop” in and out of the world, previously used as a mechanism to tell if someone was in the area. It also paves the way for us to allow migrating zombies and zombies traversing open areas in search for their next meal.

We still have some way to go in performance, the initial tests of 4000 zombies spawned reduced the server FPS to 4. After performance optimizations this increased up to 21. We’re now confident we can have the server FPS back up to 30+ with maximum numbers of zombies in the near future.

Expanding health system

Health is extending far beyond just blood, into a system that incorporates health, blood, and consciousness level. How these are all interrelating will be touched on in its own devblog in future. Some of the exciting developments coming include longterm play effects such as poor diet affecting your long term health levels. All this translates into the importance of a longterm plan for survival of your character, and we’re sure the role of medical specialists will become very important - hopefully emphasizing social interaction opportunities.

Chernarus Expansion

This continues at a huge pace. The two new villages in expand Cherno and provide it a true city feeling. Also expanding is the top (north) map area and the continued development of our large-scale features being added to the map. More to follow on this! (we can’t wait to show some more of this!)

Loot spawning

Finding loot now involves scavenging inside of vehicles, looking for items stuck between furniture, prying open car boots, or strewn in the wasteland itself. Consuming your bounty now results in rubbish, such as empty cans after consuming your beans. This is no mere gimick, because your trash can be used to track you.

Conclusion

There is a great deal more that can be covered, but we’re really deeply in the thick of development at the moment and we just wanted to get something quick and dirty to all those waiting for standalone. We know that you want it released, and we know you want to know when this will be - but we’re 100% committed to making this a great game, and that means we are making sure to do things properly. We’re happy and confident about the progress, so it’s one foot after another and soon we’ll be at the finish line.

We added a Roaming Quarantine Squad Units throughout the map. While they have Rare Loot, there is a high chance you wont survive an encounter. Encounter rate 20-40%. Basically these are several units spread across the map and have one agenda, to find and you kill. They will be highly lethal and will carry proper military weapons. They roam the map in search to "clean" the breakout. These units will also kill zombies if found.

Military and custom buildings have been added to forgotten spots (Kamenka, NEAF, & more) and areas leaving room for broad aggressive search for weapons throughout the map, rather than your normal cities (Stary, NWAF & etc)

Zombie spawns have become random and throughout the WHOLE map. Included all forested areas, if you set up camp somewhere, expect to see Zombies there sometimes or coming through.

Added R3F Realism. This adds some very realistic features to DayZ Mercenary. You must be conscious of your gear weight. The more gear you carry, the heavier you are, the faster you get tired. You will have to make choices on what gear you decide to keep. Everything adds weight. The more gear you have, the higher the chance of a black out. All stances are affected (standing, crouching, crawling) as well as you backpack inventory.

Added New Weapons to Helicopter Crash Sites.

Added Weapon Crates randomly located throughout the map.

Zombie spawns have been increased by radius and per person in order to keep one from knowing if other players are near or within locations of interest.

New Vehicles + Vehicle spawns have radically been changed to 200+ Custom spawn points. Vehicles will not spawn in location as seen on DayZ DB.

Addition of gutting and eating dead players & zombies as seen on DayZ 2017 (thanks Shinkicker for allowing us this opportunity)

New Spawn Skins, for example Original Bandit Skin meets new School, New Clothing, New Backpacks

Radios have been added in (rare find), as of now we will have specific functions and usage for it in the coming builds.

If your in a vehicle, zombies and loot tables will spawn regardless.

Lowered Loot Rates, Lowered food and drink to be a little more realistic, but enough to survive.

Merged Boil Water Action - 1.7.5.1 Vanilla. Requires an empty tin can or empty soda can and a filled water bottle. Light a fire and you will get an option to boil your water. Non Boiled water has a chance of infection.

Merged Roll Action - 1.7.5.1 Vanilla. Must have a primary weapon for this to work.

Dean “Rocket” Hall during his Puja ceremony today, proceeded by a local lama. Flour is spread on each others faces, hopefully signifying the individual reaches old age. Rocket is completing this devblog from Everest Base Camp during his attempt on the summit of Mt Everest.

Devblog from Everest base camp!

I’ll start with a huge thank you to the DayZ development team who have continued development at a breakneck pace despite me being off living a lifelong dream to climb Mt Everest. Although the timing is poor for my sabatical, it is not something planned on a whim and involves non-refundable costs of up to $100k.

So here I am, at Everest Base Camp, 5400 meters, writing what I am sure is the highest ever devblog from the ground! This is largely able to occur because of Matt Lightfoot, the youngish looking chap who is our tireless Production Assistant. Both him and others have continued to send me progress updates and approvals, which I am accessing via a satellite connection.

Anyway, the important bit is the game. Ivan is now working a great deal directly on the project, and has been picking up the slack for some of the areas I needed to address which has been a huge help. Those from the community who wanted to get involved in writing are keen to get started, but the response is so massive that we are looking to put a structure in place to ensure community written books pass through some kind of editorial process. This community content, together with copyright expired books, will form the basis of hundreds or thousands of books that can be found and read in the world. There are no set timeframes for this, so please be patient.

Programmer Roundup

Ondrej, our lead programmer, continues his work on moving DayZ into a server-client architecture, turing the entire architecture of DayZ into an MMO. Jirka is working on updating some of our steamworks integration, and fixing bugs associated with the massive inventory changes we implemented over the past month.

Radio Implementation

Bebul is working on our Radio implementation, allowing players to communicate using a basic radio, similar (but more simple) to the popular ACARS radio mod for ArmA2. Players pick up radios, and they can set a frequency and talk/receive text/voice from other players. The microphone or speaker can be turned on or off to allow players to use radios as a listening device. If the player has not crafted a headset onto the radio, then the output is public (either voice or text). The results are fantastic, and Bebul is now ensuring this all works properly in the all special cases during Multiplayer play.

Animators

Our team is working their way through the animation backlog, involving new zombie animations for the new skeleton, test melee moves for our new melee system, new animations for the new animals (such as the deer), and then onto player animations for the new skeleton, custom designed to feel more like a civilian rather than the trained soldier of ArmA2.

Internal Artists

Mostly they are working on creating the interior data required for the AI zombies to pathfind correctly inside buildings. New road decals have been created by Mario for the roads so it looks like they have a damaged look to them, to give the world more of a feel like “the Road”. One of our big special new buildings is in game, and we will surprise you with some new screenshots of this in the next devblog!

External Artists

Our team of artists recruited from the community have been hard at work. The new male character mesh is being prepared, in line with the new skeleton, as well as a new template for clothing skinning. The new M4A1 has been committed with proxies that allow our new attachment system to be utilized along with the crafting system. Also being worked on are a Gas Mask, Pilot Helmet, Mauser Rifle, pen/paper, mess tin, can opener - a huge amount of items are being developed while we wait for the programming tasks to be completed heading towards our first public release.

The excitement from the team is tremendous with all these fantastic new items, allowing huge crafting possibilities.

Map Design

Seven towns have been remade by SenChi, overseen by Ivan, to alter the look and feel better. Bugs are continually being fixed and we have purchased new satellite data to improve the detail of the base map (looks much better in the distance with this new data).

Conclusion

I realize some people are upset at my departure from the project for two months to climb Mt Everest, but hopefully from this you can see the large team Bohemia have assembled behind the development that are continuing to innovate and develop DayZ Standalone in the direction of the game we all want. This is going to take as long as it needs to, we want to release our initial alpha under the architecture it needs to avoid hacking and security issues - this is the only remaining task stopping us from releasing the alpha. But while this task is being completed, we can continue with other activities.

The next devblog will feature some screenshots to demonstrate the progress, captured by Matt, but my satellite connection and tiny laptop cant cope with downloading the current build.

So, this is the devblog I write from Everest Base Camp, at 5400 meters! Tomorrow I am off to the Khumbu Icefall for training in fixed lines and ladders, big thanks to the community for their continued patience, and everyone at Bohemia who is pushing hard towards our DayZ standalone initial release!

Everest has already been climbed, I don't get the fascination. It is now simply an "Outward Bound" for rich pecker heads that will walk past a dying man to reach a summit that countless other rich pecker heads have already trampled on.

Everest has already been climbed, I don't get the fascination. It is now simply an "Outward Bound" for rich pecker heads that will walk past a dying man to reach a summit that countless other rich pecker heads have already trampled on.

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LOL I was thinking "Why the fuck are you on everest when you could be making the fucking game"

LOL I was thinking "Why the fuck are you on everest when you could be making the fucking game"

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I think of it like this. He is probably not there alone but with some BI Studios guys for a team building thing or something. He has worked on this project for a couple of years now so let him have his break.

Rocket may be x-way up a mountain right now, but there’s still a team of Bohemians working hard to prepare DayZ Standalone for its eventual alpha release. For this week’s development update, that team have published a video of a session from last month’s PAX East. An epic hour and a half info-dump, the majority of the video is Q&A about development plans and ideas. But you also get a nice chunk of unbroken shaky-cam game footage, running through the work-in-progress inventory and control scheme changes.

In addition, the dev team have released screenshots for a new in-game “building”. The shipwreck features a “vast amount” of indoor space, making it a cool, but high-risk location for wandering survivors. According to DayZ production assistant Matthew Lightfoot, “we haven’t decided exactly where it is going to be placed on Chernarus yet … so some of the pictures are taken from our test map which is bland/featureless and which we use for testing new buildings.”

anyone still play this? Good for a beginner like me to join or is it too far gone now?

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Me and brandon like to play, but we're not on at the same time anymore. It will be fine to play for anyone. Just don't search up on dayz stuff. Trust me on this, the lack of knowledge as you play makes it so much more fun.

Any of guys that play this still go to this server ,I am usually on it mostly everyday ,Its fun server great admins mostly everyone will help out .You will need rmod installed and just use Dayz commander to copy paste the ip in favourites.

After that just go to settings in Dayz commander and paste this in the additional Launch options,If you use Steam just ignore the setting for it, it will mess up the Battle Eye updates to give data5 errors.Just put that(the command line below) in Dayz commander and it will work.

-mod=@dayz;@rMod

My in game name on the server is +MED+NuclearFallOut Hope to see you guys on soon. MED is a faction and yes we give Blood Trans medical supplies or rides to any where you want to go.

On Thursday the 10th May, several of us went on a day trip to Real Chernarus, here is just a small selection of pictures and a couple of comparison shots, showing you real Chernarus and in-game Chernarus (DayZ Standalone).

Hopefully these pictures and the interview will give you an insight into the amount of work that our map designers put in to make Chernarus feel authentic.